


Where lovers drown (Let the water take us)

by ChouxQueen



Series: Fin rots [1]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Dante (Devil May Cry), Intersex Vergil (Devil May Cry), Lady and Trish have had enough of these fools, M/M, Mpreg, Obsessive Behavior, PTSDante, Stockholm Syndrome, Time Travel, Touch-Starved, Weird demon biology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29652306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChouxQueen/pseuds/ChouxQueen
Summary: A young man stumbled upon a Selkie on a beach, stole her coat, and coerced her into becoming his wife. They had a short-lived marriage, because no matter how much he loved her, and how much she eventually came to love him and the children they had together, she always yearned for the sea more. So when opportunities presented themselves, she took off to the salty depth from whence she came and never returned.A Dante who lives with the guilt of killing his brother meets a younger Vergil from another time and space.2D3V, not actually a selkie!AU.
Relationships: Dante & Trish (Devil May Cry), Dante/Vergil (Devil May Cry), Nero & Vergil (Devil May Cry), Trish & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Series: Fin rots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2179002
Kudos: 26





	Where lovers drown (Let the water take us)

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter warning: Angst, non-graphic description of abuse and blood drinking. 
> 
> Dante in the fic should be post-DMC2 and pre-DMC4, so he's a sad boy™

Dante woke up to the pungent scent of electricity and the sound of a downpour banging on his roof, and the muted pain in his chest was familiar. It always went like this: every now and then the sky would unload its watery burden onto the earth, and he would be reminded of Temen-Ni-Gru. And, just as how that tall and terrible tower had been a gateway to hell in life, it was a gateway to a decade worth of grief in his head. Dante would relive Vergil’s descent into hell, Vergil’s corrupted visage under Nelo Angelo’s helmet, Vergil’s blood and gore on the Rebellion, on Ebony and Ivory, on his clothes, on his hands…

Vergil’s death.

No, no, no, not death. Dante sat up in the bed and physically flinched from the emptiness of the air next to him. He held his breath, eyes dashing from corners to corners, and only dared to breathe when his enhanced demonic senses pinpointed a dark silhouette leaning against the door.

Lightning cracked the sky in half, lending him its brightness to dispel any lingering doubt in his heart.

Vergil.

Vergil was here. Vergil was alive, curling up like an oversized cat that fell asleep while waiting for its owner to let it out. Pulled by the thread of longing and wonder, he crept over. When had Vergil ever look so… serene? His bangs hanged limply over his forehead, his pale eyelashes were like two crescent moons, and the frown on his face smoothed out in sleep, giving him a soft appeal.

On a morbid whim, Dante recalled a time when a customer, a distant relative of some Earl from oversea, insisted he saw her art collection. He agreed at the time (because she promised lunch and he was that cheap), although he didn’t pay attention to any of her blabbering. All of the paintings looked the same to his uncultured eyes, all except for one, _Sleep and his half-brother Death_.

Hypnos, the god of sleep, and Thanatos, the god of death, were brothers in Greek mythos. In the painting, they were laying side by side. Without the composition of light and shadow and the poppies on Hypnos’ lap, it would be impossible to discern between the two. This was deliberate. Isn’t death like drifting in the ocean of dream? Don’t the deceased look like they are sleeping?

When he took Vergil in - when he captured him- he insisted that they shared a bed. At first it was pragmatical, he had to keep an eye on him. Later, he found that having Vergil in bed helped his insomnia. Dante chalked it up to the fact that in childhood they had shared the same sleeping quarter. Their heartbeats had been each other’s earliest lullabies since they were in Eva’s womb. So even with the constant paranoia of Vergil slipping away in the night, as long as he was next to him, Dante slept easily like a baby in his mother’s embrace.

He just had to make sure Vergil couldn’t run first.

Suddenly, Vergil’s rest no longer seemed so idyllic. The illusion of bliss and tranquility was rudely broken by his bloodless lips, by bruises, wounds and patches of flaky blood, and by his black and blue ankles. It was a miracle how he hadn’t woken Dante up when he crawled out of bed.

Was Vergil asleep or was he dead? The irrational side of his brain - the same one bringing up the painting of - quipped. Dante felt nauseated as he studied at Vergil’s injuries as if truly seeing them for the first time. It didn’t matter that they were half demons - that he and Vergil had come out of fights looking worse, he pressed his ear against Vergil’s chest until he heard the slow thump thump thump of his heart.

He could fall back to sleep like this, right here, on the cold floor, clinging to his brother. Alas, he felt the body beneath him freeze. When he drew back, Vergil was squinting at him. 

Blinking innocently, he said, “Good morning, brother. Did I wake you up?”

He was hovering above Vergil, his hands on either side of him, cornering him against the door. Vergil’s lips peeled back to shape a wordless snarl. Next thing Dante knew, there was red in his vision, blood mixed with saliva sliding down his face.

A lifetime ago, little Dante would have thrown a tantrum. As children, they had got into fights for pettier reasons. Present Dante still wanted to do that. He wanted to hold Vergil’s shoulder and shake him.

Vergil, Vergil, did it kill him to be a little kinder to Dante? Why was he so cruel?

He wanted to, but didn’t. If Vergil’s expression were a hailstorm, his own was as stagnant as the Doldrums where there was neither wind nor tide. He wiped the blood away with his thumb and licked it clean.

Vergil’s pupils shrank with contempt and poorly veiled fear, or so he thought.

* * *

When Trish and Lady ambushed Dante’s office while he was away with the intention of dragging him to a bar that day, they didn’t expect this.

“Dante, is that…” Lady gasped, so surprised by the presence of the unconscious man in Dante's arms that she didn’t step out of the way quick enough and was rudely pushed aside.

“It’s Vergil.” He affirmed. Dante shoved all the documents that Patty had so lovingly sorted for him off his desk, and laid Vergil down on it. The latter's blue coat was a tattered mess, his body was no better, but to Dante, whose last memory of his twin was that of the Black Knight, he had never looked healthier.

Trish walked closer and said grimly, “Are you sure it’s him? He didn’t look like this when he became Nelo Angelo.”

“I know it’s him.” Dante murmured and swept Vergil's loose bangs back.. He felt his face wet with something other than blood and sweat. Tears. They fell onto Vergil’s face, some got stuck on his eyelashes, some rolled down his cheeks, making both twins look like they were crying. 

It was Vergil, but this Vergil wasn’t from his time. He was a splitting image of the arrogant boy-not-yet-a-man who fell into hell, while Dante himself was well into adulthood. Moreover, Dante’s past experience with a fragment of Yamato told him that Vergil might have come here through a rift in time and space by accident.

The familiar ache amplified momentarily, worse than a knife to the heart, then ebbed as quickly as how it had come.

The two women looked at each other helplessly.

“What are you going to do with him?” Lady crossed her arms, hiding her mixed feeling behind a “no bullshit - only business” tone.

“Dante…” Trish warned, seemingly having caught up onto his train of thought. “Nelo Angelo was enslaved by Mundus once.”

At her implication, Dante finally turned around to grace them with a frosty glare. “I know what I’m doing.”

Whoever this Vergil was, his decision had already been made. If he were the Vergil in this world sent to the future, Dante must keep him until he could convince him to give up on seeking Mundus, maybe then the past would be changed, and he wouldn’t have to die. If he were a Vergil from a different world altogether, well,

Dante had endured living without Vergil for so long, another him from another world could, too.

* * *

The rain had been reduced to tiny pitter-patters, and sunlight poured in through windows, casting Vergil in a pleasant warmth he hadn’t thought he would miss until he was in Hell. It soothed his painful body, if only a tiny bit.

Vergil was sitting on a chair, on his back was the sun’s brilliant rays, in front of him kneeled a man who wore his twin’s face.

He claimed to be Dante.

Vergil frowned. Dante would never embraced his demonic heritage so closely. It had taken Vergil impaling him with the Rebellion for him to begin acknowledging it. Dante was more human. Dante clung to their morals. Dante looked down on the “barbaric” ways of their father’s kind. Dante would never resort to drinking his blood to control him.

The imposter was shrouded by Vergil’s shadow. He sucked and lick his wrist greedily, but more blood got on their clothes than into his mouth. Elongated nails pinched his arm, ten red trails trickled from where they embedded in it.

Vergil’s mind conjured up an old image.A boy was running around with cookie crumbs on his cheeks and fingers. A light haired woman appeared and wiped his face. A tall man told her to “stop babying him”, but said so with mirth. Another boy sneered, “I don’t want your dirty hands on my book!”

Dante was always a messy eater.

He chased the image away bitterly.

His strength was leaving him through the torn arteries, leaving him weak. Vergil despised it. He also could do nothing about it. The traumatic experience of being pressed to the ground and having blood forcefully taken through the neck was still fresh on his mind, so he suppressed his anger and held his head high. At least in this way, he could pretend that he could pull his hand away at anytime.

Control was an illusion. He held onto it desperately, a proud captain who refused to leave his sinking ship.

He peered down at “Dante” who was all kind of wrongness. He was older than Vergil, his shoulder broader, the lines on his face defined and angular, lacking the roundness of an adolescent boy. He was stronger. Vergil both craved and hated his power.

However, what unnerved him the most was neither his prowess in combat nor his appearance, it was the hollowness that permeated his very being.

_Where are your smiles?_

He must have said it out loud because “Dante” suddenly stopped lapping at his wrist and stared at him. Briefly, so brief that it might all be in his head, the younger (now older) twin’s mouth quirked. A ray of sunlight finally touched his red eyes, exploding into tiny shafts of orange and yellow. In that moment, Vergil saw the ghost of the Dante he knew.

A spell of dizziness that had nothing to do with anemia stuck him.

Outside, a colorful band arced across the sky, and the last of the dark clouds dissipated.

**Author's Note:**

> Did anyone order Angst? *laugh track*  
> Despite various references, this fic is sadly not a mermaid!AU. However, I do have some ideas for a selkie fic while working on it.


End file.
